Episode 184 Scott Adams: Predicting The Manafort Verdict Using the Persuasion Filter
Date: 2018-08-17 | Duration: 16:45
Topics
The Persuasion Filter predicts the Manafort verdict The jury duty experience changes you
Transcript
[0:12] Yes, it’s a very special evening edition of Coffee with Scott Adams, this time with nothing but an empty hand because who drinks coffee this time of night? I know who’s drinking tea at this time of night—the ball-jack. Hey everybody. Well, a lot of people are up at this time. I think I’ve been doing these too early. So I want to talk about the Manafort verdict. So the trial is ongoing in terms of the deliberations and the jury is retired for the evening and they’re gonna deliberate again tomorrow morning. And I want to see if we can get ahead of the verdict to see which way it might be going. Now, I’ll tell you in advance I can’t give you certainty, but we’re gonna have some fun because we’re gonna look at the clues that are given. So here’s some of the clues—
[1:14] —that we have about which way the verdict might go. So the jury asked—well, here’s the first clue: the defense didn’t present a defense. They just figured they didn’t have to. So usually that’s interpreted as a sign of confidence that the prosecution didn’t make their case. But it also might be that they’re just so darn guilty that they might as well say, “Well, maybe we can fool at least one of these people by saying, ‘Look, they didn’t prove the case,’” and just give somebody something to believe in. So it could go the other way, I suppose, but it does feel like a confident move. And I would think the jury would probably see it that way. The jury would probably say, “Well, if the defense is so certain, you know, maybe I’ve missed something.” So the other hint we have—
[2:16] —yes, somebody’s prompting me here, is that the jurors asked for some new information. And one of them was: can the judge help them redefine or define again “reasonable doubt”? Do you know who doesn’t ask that question? People who don’t have reasonable doubt. So on the face of it, just the fact that they’re asking the question is a pretty good sign that at least one person has some reasonable doubt, or they think they might have some reasonable doubt, or they have some reason to believe that they might reasonably expect they have some reasonable doubt. So there’s something like that going on. Now, that doesn’t mean that that person couldn’t get talked out of it.
[3:19] All right, but so far the hints, the clues we have, suggest either an innocent verdict or something on the light side of a verdict, I guess, if they have options. I don’t know if they have the options. Anyway, now here’s another clue: the prosecution put on the stand this partner of Manafort named Gates. Now, Gates was demonstrated to be a crook who had been stealing from Manafort for years. So obviously he didn’t like Manafort; he’d been stealing from him. Or he’s just such a bastard that it didn’t matter anyway. And so here’s the thing: if you’re the jury, aren’t you asking yourself, “Why would they put the least credible person in the world on the stand unless—”
[4:22] “—unless they didn’t have a case without it?” So just think about it. One of those twelve people in the jury deliberations is gonna figure out that if they needed to put an obvious known liar with a long criminal record (that he’s confessed to)—if that’s necessary to hold the case together, well, that’s a little “reasonably doubty,” isn’t it? So that’s another clue, just the fact that they have to use this guy. All right, here’s another clue: some of the questions that the jury was asking give us some insight about what was presented. And it’s obvious that in order to understand what happened in the technical sense—you know, whether it was a tax law or some other kind of law that got violated—they have to—
[5:24] —figure out things like: what’s a shelf company? And what did Gates do? And who owns what percentage of this company? And which company is required to file the documents? And what are in these documents? And who actually is promising what in these documents? Now let me ask you this and try to keep a straight face when I say this: imagine the complexity of that case and now imagine twelve citizens—any citizens. Do you think you can think of twelve people who could follow it or could just even understand the complexity of the case? I don’t think so. Not in America. I mean, if your jury was picked from an Ivy League school, yeah, probably. If your jury happened to be all lawyers—which is—
[6:26] —deeply unlikely, maybe they might be able to understand it, or tax accountants. But the odds of twelve people who qualified for jury duty for just being not obviously biased, the odds of all of them understanding the complexities of this thing? Pretty low. Now, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t understand the complexity of it and you just can’t even tell if a law was violated—you just can’t penetrate the details—are you gonna say to yourself, “Well, I’m totally sure this person is guilty,” when I don’t even understand what the hell’s going on? Don’t you think there’s at least one person out of twelve that just doesn’t know what’s going on and doesn’t want to send somebody to jail for 30 years for that? But I saved my best reason for last. I’m gonna say that nothing I’ve said so far—
[7:28] —has been persuasive to you. At least not home run persuasive. You might be tilting a little bit; you might be leaning. But I don’t think I’ve quite persuaded you yet. And now I’m going to persuade you. Imagine finding twelve people in the United States who do not have a strong opinion about President Trump. Can you imagine that? Now imagine that the defense is not completely incompetent and let’s say the defense, either knowingly or through statistical likelihood because they’re good at picking juries, made damn sure that there are three or four Trump supporters on the jury. Do you think there are no Trump supporters on that jury? And would anybody who is a Trump—
[8:32] —supporter not be aware prior to being sequestered (I assume at some point they had to be cut off from the news)? But this story of the thing called the “deep state” has been here for a long time. Could you really get twelve virginal jurors for this case? For just about anything else that you can imagine, I think you could. Even a terrible serial killer—you could have a serial killer where you could get twelve people who just really didn’t give a rat’s ass about crime news and just hadn’t heard about it. That’s possible. Even if it’s headline news, there are lots of people who just don’t really follow the news. But there is not one adult in this freaking country who doesn’t have a strong opinion about Donald Trump.
[9:32] Candidate Trump, and then President Trump. He just does that. So now ask yourself: that person has had a lot of time to think. That person, or persons—I’m going to say hypothetically three Trump supporters out of twelve, just modestly three—what are the odds that at least one of them has not connected the following dots? And here are the dots: if Manafort’s balls are in a vice grip, President Trump might be in trouble. Because as we’ve learned from Alan Dershowitz, the smartest guy in the game, sometimes they squeeze somebody, and sometimes the person will sing, and sometimes they will compose. And could—
[10:33] —they squeeze Manafort enough that he would find something to say bad about the President? And would the juror think to themselves, “You know, I might be the only thing keeping the deep state from overthrowing the President of the United States”? Now we can’t read minds. We don’t know. Maybe all twelve of those jurors are just anti-Trump. Anything’s possible, right? But isn’t it far more likely that even if the people were asked, “Hey, are you a Trump supporter?” that they might have sat in that jury box and looked right at that lawyer and said, “Trump supporter? I’m not really into politics,” wink, wink, wink. Ask—
[11:37] —yourself this: if you thought—let’s say you’re a Trump supporter, so just imagine this—and you thought to yourself that if you were on that jury, you could protect the President from what you believed was the deep state… and for this example, you don’t have to have an opinion about whether there is a deep state or if that’s just a bunch of baloney. You just have to accept that if there are three Trump supporters on that jury, probably at least one of them thinks there’s a deep state and thinks that their decision in that jury room could be the only thing that keeps that deep state from taking out their President. What would they do? Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever served on a jury, but serving on a jury—
[12:37] —is a very special thing. If you haven’t done it, it’s not a good time. It’s not fun. I don’t recommend it for entertainment. But if you want to be a good citizen, you really have to try it. All right, so don’t use your get out of jury duty thing every time if you don’t have to. You have to do a little jury duty. All right, even if you can get out of it, do a little. It changes you. Because here’s the thing that I’ve said about the potential jury composition, but there’s one thing that’s true about—I’ll guarantee this is true about all twelve people: I believe all twelve people want justice. That’s the one thing I’m positive about—that they all want—
[13:38] —justice. So those are our clues. Let’s see your opinions. You’ve heard the same clues I have. You’ve seen the same news that I have. I’ve made my case. It only takes one juror who believes they’re the difference. Yeah, and your opinions? Jump right in. Say “guilty” or “not guilty.” I’m just looking for your… Agreed, I was on a jury. Have you been on jury duty? I have, yeah, a few times. Twice, I—
[14:43] —think. All right, that’s all I have for tonight. I’m gonna leave it there. So just for fun, I’m gonna predict that—I don’t know if the jury has options about deciding the worst thing versus not so bad—but I think the jury is going to be kind to Mr. Manafort. I’ll make that prediction now. Not a hundred percent. If you look at it the other way, why were they doing it? Why would they bring a case if they didn’t think they would win it? I believe the odds of winning these cases is very high. So why would they bring a case unless they were really sure they had the goods? Well, here’s the thing: maybe they were bluffing. Maybe they had to make the case—
[15:46] —to squeeze Manafort. And that would be the one situation where you might try to scare him into cooperating and not have a real case. Now, I don’t know if anybody does that sort of thing, but I wouldn’t rule it out. All right. Yeah, hung jury seems like the likely case. Yeah. So to be clear: when I say it seems likely you’ll have at least one juror who doesn’t go along with the rest, that would be a hung jury, not a “not guilty.” That would just be a hung jury. But I don’t know where you can get twelve people where you’re not going to have one person who says, “Screw it, I’m just going to put a wrench in this.” All right, I’ll talk to y’all later.